Pinterest debuts fresh video tools for creators, brands

Brief:

Pinterest introduced four video-related updates for creators and brands on its platform. The image-pinning platform revamped its video uploading tool to let creators and brands seamlessly upload video content directly, per a blog post.
L'Oréal, Giada De Laurentiis' Giadzy, Tastemade and PureWow are among the brands using video on Pinterest to spark inspiration and tell a story. Pinterest said it has seen a 31% jump in searches for inspirational videos in the past year, while its users are 54% more likely to say they were inspired to action by videos on Pinterest than on other social media platforms.
Pinterest business profiles now include a new videos tab that lets marketers feature all of their video content in one place. The company also added video analytics tools to give businesses data on lifetime views and insights into their video performance. Creators and brands can use Pinterest's Pin Scheduler to set up video posts in advance. Pinterest announced the updates as content creators and their fans gather at the VidCon conference in Anaheim, California, July 10-13.

Insight:

Pinterest is highlighting its latest video capabilities as consumer shift their viewing habits to mobile devices and advertisers boost spending on social video. Pinterest said videos on its platform don't disappear in feeds as they do on other social platforms, making them easier for viewers to discover. Pinterest users are more likely than average U.S. adults to be more adventurous, sensitive and materialistic, per a survey from YouGov published on Forbes. Those characteristics make users of the image-pinning platform a desirable target for marketers in industries such as travel, music, food and technology.

By expanding video content on its platform, Pinterest seeks to engage an audience that is smaller than for other social media companies. Pinterest has 265 million monthly active users compared with Facebook's more than 1 billion, adding to the challenge of appealing to advertisers who are seeking greater scale with comparably less effort. U.S. adults this year will spend more time using their mobile devices than they'll spend watching TV, eMarketer estimated last month. The researcher forecast that the average time spent on mobile devices will grow 3.7% this year to 3 hours and 43 minutes a day, surpassing the 3 hours and 35 minutes spent watching TV. Research shows that mobile video ads are a key driver of digital media spending. U.S. mobile advertising grew 40% to $69.9 billion last year, making up 65% of total digital ad revenue, per an annual report by the Interactive Advertising Bureau and PwC.

Pinterest is becoming more popular with direct-to-consumers marketers that are looking for a less expensive way to reach audiences as ad costs rise for Facebook and Instagram, Digiday reported. Bedding brand Buffy found that 20% of Pinterest users who end up making a purchase do so within a day of clicking on an ad, while 80% do so within 30 days. On Facebook, 75% of eventual customers convert within a day of clicking on an ad, the company said.

Pinterest has taken several steps to appeal to mobile marketers in the past year. The site in August offered to all brands a bigger "max.width" ad format that's about four times bigger than its standard video ads and stretches the full width of a smartphone screen. In October, Pinterest debuted Product Pins that show up-to-date pricing and inventory information and also have direct links to a checkout page on a retailer's site to make a purchase. The company in February automated curation of its Shop the Look feature to reduce dependence on human employees to match images with the appropriate product links.